Luxury box guest lists for big games, revealed

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In this week’s edition, we’ve unearthing:

What do you get when you mix a Game of Thrones star, five rambunctious YouTubers, one of the greatest country musicians ever, and the first person to let Elon Musk stick a chip in his brain?

How about a nationally renowned cable news anchor and the world’s best-selling author?

Or the guy who broke the news of 9/11 to George Bush, one of America’s top spies, and a former chairman of the SEC? 

You get a college president’s luxury suite at a big game. 

At most public schools, top university officials are granted a stadium suite for home football games, used to entertain and fete top-dollar donors, prestigious alumni, visiting dignitaries, and celebrities.

FOIAball figured that might be something the public would like to know more about. 

So we requested guest lists for university presidents and chancellors for the 2024 season to see who stepped into these schmancy suites. 

The responses did not disappoint. 

At Texas A&M, former president Mark Welsh hosted guests at seven games: The home opener against Notre Dame, as well as McNeese State, Bowling Green, Missouri, LSU, New Mexico State, and the school’s first tilt against Texas in 13 years. 

The Aggies' home turf, Kyle Field, was recently renovated at a cost of $500 million. Part of the overhaul included upping its high-end offerings. To get one of its boxes now, you need to drop a gift of just under a million dollars. 

Or be the school’s president. 

Welsh resigned this month, but before that, he was the university’s top ambassador, bringing VIPS to the best seats in College Station.

The first fascinating amalgamation of characters listed above comes from the Texas-Texas A&M rumble on Nov. 30, 2024. 

In the box were Lena Headey and her husband, director Marc Menchaca, an Aggie grad. Graduating from the school doesn’t grant your wife any grace; the president’s office misspelled the name of Game of Thrones’ infamously incestuous Queen Cersei.

Welcome to College Station, “Lenda.” 

Headey was in town to tour the university’s George R. R. Martin collection, which we just learned existed. 

Yes, after we found this out, we sent out a request for any Word, Pages, or Google Docs with the title “Winds of Winter.” We will get back to you.  

Alongside Headey was country music star Lyle Lovett, who graduated in 1979, and his wife, April, class of 1997. It’s an Aggie age gap situation.

But not that big of one. They both probably looked like fogies to the quintet from the YouTube channel Dude Perfect. All five of the bros and their spouses were given passes to the suite. 

The trick shot sensations got their start at A&M in the early 2010s. They also served as guest pickers for GameDay that morning. And no matter how many takes they did, they didn’t get the right end result. 

Also receiving a pass was Noland Arbaugh, a paraplegic and the first real human to try out Neuralink, allowing Elon Musk to stick a microchip inside his brain. 

Alright. He said it has improved his life tremendously. We will just leave it at that. 

Those weren’t the only folks in the packed box. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s deputy chief of staff got the invite, as well as a private equity titan and his Texas beef lobbying wife. They sat along a few other names we couldn’t place. But you might be able to.

Take a look yourself and let FOIAball know what you find. (We can be reached at [email protected].) 

A few weeks early in the season, at Military Appreciation Night against NMSU, Welsh’s box took on a different feel. 

That evening, he was joined by Andy Card, George W. Bush’s former chief of staff. Card is most well-known for becoming the only good 9/11 meme, whispering into the ear of the president that a second plane had hit the World Trade Center. 

Card resigned in quasi-disgrace after botching the response to Hurricane Katrina (plus, you know, a few other foibles along the way).  

But, like most politicos who wreak havoc on this and others nations, Card landed on his feet. He served as the Dean of the Bush School of Government and Politics at Texas A&M. 

Just about every game had attendees with ties to the Bush dynasty, which makes sense. The elder H.W. put his presidential library on the campus. Bush did not attend the school, and a metaphor about barging onto an oil-rich land and planting your flag escapes us entirely at the moment. 

Michael Downs and his wife attended as well. You probably have never heard that name. But you’ve heard of U-2 spy planes and Reaper drones and America’s extralegal dominion over the skies. 

Downs is a longtime military official who ran these high-level Air Force intelligence units for decades.

Days after the game, Downs was appointed as the Department of Defense's top liaison to the CIA. It’s a quiet but prominent role. The previous occupant of the job is now the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. 

He also has OpSec bested by FOIAball. Think what you will of that. 

Downs himself was an Aggie. But you don’t have to be an Aggie to get invited. Sometimes you just need to help the school recoup a few million in losses. 

Rounding out the list was a former chairman of the SEC. Not that one. The much less powerful Securities and Exchange Commission.

Richard Breeden ran the agency from 1989 to 1993. Years later, he was put in charge of the Bernie Madoff Victims’ Fund, helping those swindled by the Ponzi scheme recoup lost savings. 

Texas A&M, through a money manager, had funds with Madoff, seeing $4.7 million disappear. 

It’s possible those recouped swindled dollars went right back to a swindler. The first restitutions were handed out in November 2017. On Dec. 1, 2017, the Aggies hired Jimbo Fisher.  

The Madoff Victims Fund announced its final round of payments in December 2024, twelve years after the ‘08 crash. The Aggies are on a slightly swifter remunerative schedule, on the hook for Fisher’s buyout for just six more years. 

Much further north, in mid-September 2024, Alabama’s Kalen DeBoer faced his first real (ish) test in replacing Nick Saban, traveling to face Wisconsin.

Who might be interested in catching her alma mater’s game against the Badgers?

That would be CNN’s Kaitlan Collins, appearing on Wisconsin Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin’s guest list. But the primetime anchor didn’t even have the biggest media clout in the box. 

That would go to novelist James Patterson, who attended with his wife, Susan, a Madison grad. 

Might they have interacted? Well, Wisconsin went so far as to provide seat numbers for everyone’s tickets. Patterson and his wife were in row B, seats 1 and 2, while Collins and an unnamed guest sat in row B, seats 3 and 4.

Wisconsin told FOIAball that the group sat in the Wisconsin Club, which the school uses for "relationship building with alumni, donors and friends.”

Collins, it said, attended as a "friend of the university."

Her Crimson Tide rolled, 42-10. 

At Michigan State, seats in its president’s box are typically handed out to donors. But in the documents given to FOIAball, several spots were reserved for communications department guests. 

On the lists were top Michigan media officials, including the vice president of content at MLive, which owns some of the biggest papers in Michigan; the general manager of WLIX, NBC’s East Lansing affiliate; and the recently announced head of Crain’s Detroit. 

Michigan State has had some… we will politely say… bad press over the years. Were the invites an attempt to curry favor? We asked all involved and no one proffered an answer. 

One place that proffered a non-answer to a question we didn’t ask was Hawaii. In response to a separate request for some AD communications, included was a list of attendees for a suite the Arizona Wildcats gave the school.

They were all blacked out. But a revealing column was still visible.

FOIAball had reached out to all the above schools to see what factors go into these invitations. No one answered that query.

But in suggesting names to invite, “Giving history” is the only column on the spreadsheet.

Every university in the NCAA is required to audit its athletics department to ensure schools aren’t abusing funds (though we’ve already found creative ways they are).

These audits only provide top-level expenses and lack granular details.

Included in every audit are schools’ bowl game expenses. Those often cost upwards of $2 million. Universities recoup most of that in payouts, but still, that’s a lot of money. We’ve been compiling line-item bowl expenses and will have a larger breakdown planned for later in the season. 

But there’s one we couldn’t hold off on sharing. 

In its university audit, the Iowa State Cyclones listed $2.2 million in expenses for everyone’s favorite bowl, the Pop-Tarts Bowl. We requested a full accounting, along with some receipts. 

One particular item caught our eye. The school dropped $5,887 on a fan function the night before the game, held at the team hotel.

For the event, the Cyclones purchased 25 cases of Pop-Tarts Snack Bites at $100 a pop (tart), spending $2,500 on the sugary breakfast snack. 

They say nothing in life is free. That maxim hits even harder when you learn that at the Pop-Tarts Bowl, even the Pop-Tarts cost you. 

We here at FOIAball love an extravagant meal. Perhaps you’ve been able to tell that from our recipes so far. 

But there are plenty of times when it’s Sunday night and we’re exhausted and we have no idea what to make. When we want something exciting but without any effort. 

We’re sure you’ve been in the same spot. Our solution, soon to be your solution, is larb. Not authentic Thai or Loatian larb, but an extremely bastardized version we’ve honed over the years that imparts plenty of the dish's essence, flavors, and textures, but wouldn’t make it across the pass at Bangkok’s worst tourist trap. 

So what? It’s cheap and it comes together in 20 minutes. You need to dice a whole heck of a lot, but after that, you’re free.

Let’s start with aromatics: garlic, ginger, jalapeno, scallion, and shallot pulverized into teeny, tiny milliliter-ish-sized bits. 

The garlic we peel whole and do our best interpretation of an onion dice. Same for the shallot. For the jalapeno, you can deseed if you’d like the spice tamped down, but we are trying to develop quick, fast flavor. Leave them in. 

Ginger gets sliced into planks, julienned, and then run through with a super sharp knife.

For the scallions, remove the green tops and save for a garnish. Lop off the wet, gummy, tentacular roots. Split the white cylinder in half, then do it again with the now-semi-circular stalk. Mince fine.

This can be made vegetarian with white button mushrooms, or not vegetarian, with pork or turkey. But it's best if you combine the two. Make as much as possible, because you’ll eat it fast. 

Slice mushrooms lengthwise, leaving the stem on or removing it. I’ve been cooking for decades and still have no idea which is correct.

Mint is typically an essential part of larb, and yet we never remember to buy it. Sorry.

Heat a skillet and cover with a thin layer of oil, placing the mushrooms down flat. Have the burner relatively high, as you want a deep, golden color. Leave for at least three minutes, really searing the bottom. Slide a fish spatula under. The shroom should be stuck. That’s the crust you want. 

Let it go a little longer, then remove, keeping the other side uncooked. This will allow some of the earthy mushroom liquid to remain in the flesh and seep out later when you add them back in, deepening the sauce's funk. 

Fry the ground pork. And we do mean fry. Too many people take the phrase “brown ground meat” to mean get rid of all the pink, settling for a pallid grey. No more. You want to cook and cook, until the water drains out, until the fat starts to render, until it all begins to sizzle. Chop it repeatedly with the flat edge of a wooden spoon into smaller and smaller kernels. Let those crisp up. Each should have its own decent crunch. This is actual browned ground meat, which imparts real flavor.

Scoop it out, keeping as much fat as possible in the pan. Add more oil if it seems too dry and throw in your assembly of chopped aromatics. 

Salt heavily. Take a teaspoon and pour it into your palm. This is what most recipes mean when they say a pinch. You’ve probably been undersalting things your whole life. 

As the veggies release water, use the same flat-bottomed wooden spoon to scrape up the pan’s caked-on brown gunk. Give the aromatics four or so minutes. You want them softened, the raw edge totally gone, but not cooked down to a paste. 

Toss in a sauce. Here’s where we get extremely inauthentic. FOIAball uses soy sauce, fish sauce, and lime juice in a 3-2-1 ratio. But divine your own with whatever you have. Rice wine vinegar, mirin, sesame oil. Maybe some sambal oelek. It should have some tang, some punch.

Allow the sauce to simmer for just a minute to come together and return the mushrooms and pork. Slap on a lid and bring to a super quick boil, then turn the heat off. Let it steep for five more minutes, the mushrooms leaking all their umami goodness. Remove the lid and taste. If it’s too thin, cook longer, but it should be a little brothy, as we are going to serve with rice.

If you feel like getting extremely fancy, take a couple tablespoons of uncooked rice and toast in a dry pan until the kernels turn a light caramel at the edges. Let cool and blitz super fine in a coffee grinder. 

Tossed into the mixture, this provides a pleasant crunch for much cheaper than whatever nuts cost these days. 

Slice a big old head of cabbage into quarters and try to pull off intact leaves.

Scoop cooked rice into the curved triangles of cabbage and drop your “larb” on top, finishing with scallion greens. Attempt to lift a leaf and watch your filling spill out as you bite in. Grab a knife and slice the cabbage into manageable hunks, and finagle everything onto a fork. 

It is filling and lively, savory and spicy, and we think healthy.  But more importantly, it comes together in a short period of time.  

Enjoy and relax. You’ve solved a week’s worth of dinner in less than a half-hour. 

If you enjoyed this, please share with a friend! That would be the best birthday gift ever. 

If you have any comments or thoughts, we’d love to hear from you: [email protected].

Leana Headey via Nost Studios/YouTube; Lyle Lovett via NPR/YouTube; Andy Card via American Veterans Center/YouTube; Kaitlan Collins via CNN/YouTube; James Patterson via GMA/YouTube